


All That You Hold Dear

by EryiScrye (SomberSecrets)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne is Ready to Kill Him, F/M, Jaime is a Fool, Sandor Arya and Sansa Are Best Pals Now, Sandor Hates It, Sansa Gets Her Retribution, post 8x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 11:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomberSecrets/pseuds/EryiScrye
Summary: “Know Cersei, that my lasts thoughts will be of her and that my greatest regret is that I won’t be able to die in her arms.”





	All That You Hold Dear

**Author's Note:**

> Going to be completely honest. I wrote this mainly for the first part, but then felt like it needed to go somewhere so I continued it. I don't know if I'm happy with how the second part turned out, but I guess it is what it is.

“Know Cersei, that my lasts thoughts will be of her and that my greatest regret is that I won’t be able to die in her arms.”

Emerald eyes met emerald eyes. They had come into the world together, but both were trying to ensure they would leave apart.

Blood dripped down his bruised and battered face. It dripped in his eyes, and curled around his lips. But still he stared and sneered at her in his last act of defiance. If she was going to give the order to kill him, he would make sure that she would have to see his life snuffed out before her eyes.

She simply smiled at him, the wicked smirk of victory still on her face.

The Mountain approached Jaime’s manacled form and Jaime wished that he weren’t on his knees. He would have preferred dying on his feet. He would have preferred a great many things.

Cersei looked down upon him, all the warmth that had once been in her eyes gone. She waved her hand, no hesitation in the movement. The Mountain unsheathed his sword. Jaime gritted his teeth.

Blue, a deep sapphire blue sprung unbidden to his eyes.

He truly did regret that he would not be able to see her again. That he would never be able to reverse the things he had said to protect her. A small part of him had hoped that telling her goodbye would mean they would find each other again, like it had been every other time. But he was a fool who had never quite learnt how to play the odds. He should have known that eventually they would not stack in his favor.

The Mountain approached, sword raised and ready to take his head.

And in that moment, when he saw the sun glint off the steel, Jaime realized that glaring at Cersei as his head was lopped off would be what she wanted. It would make the last thing he would ever see be she.

So natural as the wind, his eyes drifted closed and he conjured another in his mind’s eye, her smile in the firelight by a hearth far in the north. The sword swung and from his lips unbidden came, “Brienne.”

 

The sound of metal clashed against metal. And Jaime wondered if he was doomed to battle even after death.

But there was a familiar grunt as the sound of steel sliding against steel reverberated through him, “You’re not dying today you foolish, arrogant, ass of a man! I have some things left I want to say to you!”

Jaime’s eyes flew open as Cersei flew to her feet, “You!” she hissed, her words poison as Brienne threw back the Mountain with all of her strength. Her chest heaved with the exertion.

Jaime’s eyes widened in fear. It was obvious that Brienne had fought a long battle to be here, from her dented armor and the blood staining her arms and hands. She did not have the energy to be able to withstand another melee, especially with that of the Mountain. But still she stood tall and sure as she turned her head to Cersei, her sword rose again against the older Clegane. “You once accused me, Your Grace, of loving your brother.”

Jaime dazed, flickered his eyes between the two women whom had defined the trajectory of his life.

“I didn’t answer you then, Your Grace. But this is my answer now!”

Brienne blocked another blow from the Mountain and Jaime tried to scramble hapzardly to his feet as he saw her arms shake in fatigue. If his golden hand wasn’t so hard to unbuckle he would have been free from his chains; he could have been helping her now. A hand on his shoulder pushed him back down to the ground with unnecessary force. “Stand down you Lannister cunt, it’s not like you’ll be of much help to that beast of the woman anyways.”

“Clegane,” Brienne said between gritted teeth as the edge of her sword and that of the Mountain’s slid against each other as they drew apart.

“Sandor,” Jaime echoed. Dumbfounded, he found himself sprawled onto the throne room floor as Sandor Clegane blocked the next swing the Mountain took, the swing that would have taken Brienne’s life.

“I have been waiting for this moment for a long time brother!” The hound roared in fury as his sword whipped through the air and came crashing down again and again on the Mountain’s head. Brienne backed away, brooking no argument.

The sound of metal on metal rang through the throne room as Brienne ran to him. Her eyes were hard as she picked him up off the floor and checked him for injuries. He tried to speak to her, a single word even, but every time he attempted to make a sound she would tighten her grip on his arm and glare at him in unbridled fury.

“He is mine, he will always be mine,” Cersei growled. If she had been born a man, she would have leapt down the stairs and strangled Brienne where she stood. But she hadn’t been born a man, and Brienne stood as an example of how pathetic of an excuse that was. So she did not approach them, could not approach them. She was not a fighter; she was not a warrior. “I am the Queen and everything in this realm is mine to rule!”

A voice behind her echoed, “You won’t be the Queen anymore. Nothing was ever yours. You just took and took and took. I have always wanted to witness your execution.”

Cersei turned with widened eyes as Sansa Stark smiled at her, Arya by her side and guarding her.

The Valyrian steel dagger that Arya had used to kill the Night King was now in Sansa’s hands. Arya smiled, dark and wicked as she helped guide her sister. “Stick her with the pointy end Lady Stark.”

As the blade dug into her chest, Cersei remembered. _In comes another_ , _younger, more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold dear_. She stared at Sansa Stark, a woman who had once been a scared, foolish child. She had been so easy to torture and do with as she pleased. Cersei then turned to stare at Brienne as she held onto Jaime. A beast of a woman, Cersei had once thought as she saw how they clutched onto one another and how her brother saw all that was good in her blue eyes. She thought of the Dragon Queen, destroying her armies and taking her land. The prophecy had never meant just one other.

Cersei’s body fell along with the Mountain’s as Sandor pulled his sword from his brother’s neck.

Brienne although furious still, pulled Jaime in closer while Cersei’s body fell and as he let out a gasp. It was though half of his soul had left his body and he was all the better for it.

Sansa looked at the Hound, the bloodied dagger still clutched in her palm and he nodded back. “Little bird.”

The throne room descended into quiet. Only ragged breaths broke the silence.

Arya took the dagger gently from her sister’s hand and cleaned the blood from the steel. Sheathing the blade, Arya then gently took her sister’s shoulder, “We should go. No one else knows you’re here, we should keep it that way.” Sansa nodded, almost robotically as she slowly flexed her bloodied fingers. Arya turned to the Hound, “Are you coming?”

The Hound seemed to sigh, his nostrils flaring in irritation, “How did I ever end up humoring two Stark brats?”

Arya simply grinned at him toothily as Sansa let out a small snort of amusement. She then looked down at her sworn sword whom was still wordlessly clutching onto the Kingslayer. A moment of soft clarity washed over Sansa, “You two will need a moment?”

Brienne nodded stiffly, “We will find you shortly My Lady.”

Sansa nodded, “Stay safe Ser Brienne… Ser Jaime.” The Stark siblings and the Hound rushed out of the throne room.

Jaime let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He was half expecting the room to turn against him next.

“Get me out of these chains,” Jaime said.

Brienne slowly lowered them both to the ground as she began hacking at the metal with one of the smaller daggers that were still on her belt, “I should smack you instead while I can make sure you won’t flit away.”

“Just remove the hand and be done with it already,” Jaime said desperately as he stared at the crown of Brienne’s head. She was no longer looking at him in the eye and he so much wanted to see their blue.

She looked up at him with a retort on her lips, but at his expression she quickly gazed back down again and worked her fingers into the fastenings. As the golden hand dropped onto the floor, the manacle slipped off his stump with it. Once Jaime could move his arms freely, he immediately went to envelop her. Brienne let out a breath of surprise as he buried his face into her neck, apologies coming out of him in waves. “Jaime…” Brienne bit, conflicted. His sister’s body still laid cooling in the room.

“I thought I would never see you again. I didn’t think I would feel so… scared. I never want to do that again. Leave your side that is,” Jaime murmured as he tried to hold her closer, mold their bodies into one. “I’m a foolish man, with little honor, and I left you crying in the cold, a choice that I so deeply regret—“

“A choice you should regret you bloody oaf. Why didn’t you just tell me what you plan was Jaime?” Brienne asked as she held back the urge to clutch him closer. Her body burned for the physical intimacy they had built up over the weeks they had spent together at Winterfell, but their parting had left the thought of their touches feeling bitter and cold. “I could almost kill you.”

Jaime couldn’t help but snort, “You know me Brienne. Do you really think I had any sort of a concrete plan to even tell you?”

Brienne bit the inside of her cheek. He was the sort of idiot to jump in headfirst and think later. He had proved it to her time and time again.

“All I knew was that I had to stop her and protect you.”

“I don’t need protection Jaime.”

Jaime held her closer as her arms finally wound around his waist. “Logically, I knew that, but I am but a man in love—“

Brienne quickly took his shoulders in the palms of her hands and pushed him away, “What did you say?”

He stared at her earnestly as once again he brought his one remaining hand up to clutch onto hers, his thumb caressing the hardened skin. “I am but a man in love with a woman, and a man in love can do foolish, terrible things.”

Brienne stared at him, blinking slowly as she took him in. He continued to caress her hand. “Extremely foolish,” she finally said.

He cracked a smile, “Brienne, if you’d have me back—“

Her arms wrapped around him and brought him back close. He buried himself into her arms. “Of course I’d have you back you fool. I didn’t come all this way to cast you aside. Hit you maybe… but not to let you go.”

And for the first time, Jaime was filled with unfettered happiness. There was nothing now, to hold him back from loving his lady knight and nothing would ever hold him back again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you think!
> 
> Less than 24 hours until I expect my heart to be healed and/or ripped out. Both honestly.
> 
> I'm just writing and writing and writing in order to try and reduce my ship stress. I haven't been this invested in a ship for a long time.


End file.
